Brabant Revolution

The Brabant Revolution (24 October 1789-3 December 1790) was an armed insurrection that occurred in the Austrian Netherlands between October 1789 to December 1790. In Belgium, the innovations of Emperor Joseph II of Austria stirred up a national revolution, and it was led by the privileged classes and was concerned to restore the old rather than to rebuild the State on new foundations. The Belgian aristocrats and patricians based their arguments on the writings of the philosophes and the experience of the Americans. In the Belgian provinces, the three estates (the clergy, the nobility, and the guildsmen) had cherished privileges and liberties, and the hereditary castes sought to stick to their old traditions. After (in 1787) Joseph reorganized the whole administrative and judicial system of Belgium, abolished manorial courts, estate assemblies, and town councils, and relaxed the trading monopolies of the guilds, he met with combined opposition and rebellion of all three estates. Led by the largely patrician "Estates Party" of the lawyer Hendrik Van der Noot, the Belgians drove out the Austrians in 1789 and proclaimed the "United Belgian States", closely modelled on the American Articles of Confederation. Meanwhile, a democratic party, formed from middle-class elements, had come into being under another lawyer, Jan Frans Vonck, and played some part in the revolution. The "Vonckists" advanced moderate proposals for constitutional reform; and, once the Austrians had been expelled, they were blackened by their rivals as desiring to destroy the Church and to subvert the ancient liberties of the land; they were arrested in hundreds and driven into exile, many to France. They were able to return only with the aid of the Austrians, who regained control in December 1790.